Description:

Letters page from The Advocate (Provincetown), February 9, 1989, carrying a letter by Lee Baxandall, founder of The Naturist Society, under the heading “Hustler.” Baxandall responds to the newspaper’s December 22, 1988 coverage of the split between Nikki Craft and other feminist plaintiffs and the naturist movement.

In the letter, Baxandall attacks Craft as “a hustler and pseudo-feminist without scruples,” blames the feminists for “putting the rangers back on Herring Cove women’s beach,” and disputes Craft’s report that a Naturist Society photographer had been charged in a child-molestation case. He calls the report “untrue,” asks the newspaper to reject what he describes as libel, and characterizes Craft’s allegations as “a travesty and a libel.”

Directly beneath Baxandall’s letter, the Advocate editors append an italicized fact-check stating that they checked the name and incident and found that the man had in fact been charged on June 17, 1988, by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department with two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor under age 14, with one felony prior. The editors explicitly note that the case was unresolved and invite Baxandall to dispute only whether the man had been a Naturist Society photographer.

The document is significant because the accusation of libel and the newspaper’s independent verification that a criminal charge had been filed appear together in the same column. It is part of the surviving primary-source record of the 1988–1989 conflict surrounding the Cape Cod case, the feminist plaintiffs’ withdrawal, and the subsequent dispute within the naturist movement.

Archival Family:

SPLIT — Cape Cod / Naturist Movement Split

Family item number not yet assigned.

Keywords/Subject:

Nikki Craft, Lee Baxandall, The Advocate, Provincetown Advocate, February 9 1989, Hustler letter, The Naturist Society, naturist movement, Cape Cod, Craft v. Hodel, feminist plaintiffs, Cape Cod withdrawal, SPLIT, letters to the editor, libel accusation, editorial fact-check, child molestation charge, Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, Herring Cove, nudism, naturism, feminist activism, primary source, archival document